Beware compostable pedal-bin liners

I give it to the pigs...

I have a 10-litre pedal bin in the kitchen for kitchen waste - food scraps, meat and veg trimmings, some food wrappers, etc. As I live on my own now, it takes a little while to fill it to a point where I feel it needs emptying. I recently bought a roll of compostable liners, on the basis that they were 'a good thing'. But the first time used one, the bottom dropped out when I lifted it out of the pedal-bin, depositing the contents over the kitchen floor. There had been enough moisture in the food waste and enough time before emptying for the bag to disintegrate in the bin. I've now gone back to conventional pedal-bin liners.

And isn't the warning two fold Chris?

All this so called 'compostable' or 'bio degradable' plastic only breaks down into small fragments and there is a risk that they then get into the eco-system.

I believe that if food waste reaches the various plants (bio-digesters / composting / incinerators) the bags are ripped open anyway and go off to be incinerated (potentially safer than allowing the bits back into the sea etc)?

On a parallel subject I saw something on Watchdog (I think it was) about the (often not) 'Green dot' recycling mark.

All the way though it I was commenting to myself 'you will only try to recycle non-recyclable stuff if you are too thick to look into it properly' ...

I also had a similar discussion with a couple of people (one being my Mum, who is 89 admittedly) you continued to put anything that was 'plastic' in the Council collected plastic recycling in spite of being able to read clearly on the supplied pamphlet exactly what is wanted and what is not.

So she brought me out some plastic that she was about to put in the recycling.

Me. Is that a 'food packaging tray' (like it gives as an example of acceptable on the sheet)? Her. 'No' Me. Does it have any form of recycling symbol or mark on it (like it gives as an example of acceptable on the sheet)? Her. 'No'. Me. Then throw it in the bin with the general rubbish (because as far as our council is concerned right now, that's all it is).

I have tried to explain that the council sell our plastic waste and the money they get back helps offset other council costs and hence reduce our council tax bill. [1]

If the recyclable waste gets polluted with non recyclable waste, the value of that load goes down as 1) they have to spend more time trying to separate the wanted from the wanted, somewhere along the way or 2) it all goes down as low grade (=value) waste and again, we get less for it.

And it's not just Mum of course. We go out walking the dogs the night before the bins are collected, you see in nearly every plastic recycling bin, (hard) plastic toys / items, un-flattened bottles and containers (often meaning the stuff is spilling out of the box or straining the net if they bother to put one on and will take up more room in the truck), blister packs with no re-cycling markings and all sorts of containers that have obviously not been 'rinsed out' (as per the instructions).

I'm looking forward to the day when such waste can be automatically sorted at the truck and any unwanted waste shredded and sprayed back over the owners front garden, car or though their letter box. ;-)

There is as much point trying to get such people to listen and understand about recycling as there is trying to stop them hanging all sorts of crap off their car interior mirrors or running those automatic airborne chemical dispensers in their houses. ;-(

Cheers, T i m

This re-emphasises that there is no such place as 'away' when we throw stuff away.

Most food trays have a recycling triangle on them (with number or letters) but some councils say they don't want them in recycling if it's black plastic ...

Agreed (something I've shown Mum how to spot).

... because I understand the(ir) automatic sorting machines can't determine what they are. ;-(

And they only need said machines because they can't get / trust the great unwashed to recycle stuff properly?

I don't think the likes of my Mum would have had the option of 'Materials Science' when she was at school and even still having all her 'marbles' and using her iPad every day as a camera, weather and IM terminal (when she hasn't disconnected herself), doesn't seem able to use it for searching for information (say about recycling) on the www.

Cheers, T i m

that's one way to get the recycling rate down to zero.

What always strikes me as odd is that councils think everyone must do exactly as they request in this whole recycling system. Some aren't at all happy about working for them for nothing for a political cause that is seriously flawed. Then there are the operatives who make decisions without bothering to check they've got their facts anywhere close to correct. Yes I recycle, but let's not kid ourselves it's some unquestionable moral imperative.

NT

;-)

At our local dump, if you turn up with a large black bag full of stuff they often get you to open it and they go though it, sending you here and there with any bits you could / should have recycled.

Ok?

But they aren't, it comes off their council tax (or doesn't go on) so it's not 'for nothing'? Now, I grant you there could be a system where you may choose to 'opt out' and that could mean say another £100pa on your council tax bill. Just in the same way you now have to 'op in' to get your green waste collected for £35/pa.

Political or a real-world issue?

Yup, two wrongs don't make a right.

I think that depends if you care if your kids or grandkids will be wading knee deep though waste on their way to school or not?

We 'decide' to buy this stuff and as soon as we have done so, we (not anyone else) have a moral imperative to see that it's disposed of as cleanly as possible.

Like I said, there is no such place as away, when we throw stuff away, not till we start launching stuff into space via catapult (and even then it will still be *somewhere*, less it goes into the sun etc). ;-)

Cheers, T i m

So next time, you just put it all in your non-recycling wheelie bin?

Small fragments is often the early decomposition state, but where does it end?

Or they don't think it is worth the investment of time?

I wonder if anyone has actually analysed the cost / benefit equation though?

I would guess that here, recycling soaks up at least 20 mins a week - dealing with separate bins etc, sorting waste and so on. If that is a pattern repeated nationally, then that's 27 million households worth of

(and that's before you include the extra resources (space for storage, energy, water, detergents etc))

Is it really the best and most productive thing you can do with an equivalent workforce that dwarfs the size of the UK armed forces?

If it can automatically do that, could it not also move the non recyclables into a partition on the truck for general rubbish? In fact if it can do that, why bother sorting it at all, let the truck do the lot!

No plastic involved with compostable nor with the bio degradable bags my local council provide as recyclable food bin liners. They are starch based and unlike the OP I find they will hold wet(ish) food waste. They are not as strong as plastic and possible cannot handle the weight of a full peddle bin. I compost mine and they disappear in a cold heap within a few months.

Scientists are now claiming that the largest source of "nano" particle size plastic in the oceans probably comes from using washing machines when washing synthetic fibre clothes. No need for anything to degrade as the particle size is already small in the waste water.

In message snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, T i m snipped-for-privacy@spaced.me.uk> writes

There must be something else as well, because I find the smallish black plastic pots that puddings sometimes come in are ideal for mixing small quantities of epoxy. Many other plastic food containers I've tried just dissolve.

What annoys me is the useless wording "plastic - widely recycled" on packaging. 'Plastic' covers a huge range of materials and different councils recycle different ranges of types. Even if a container has a numbered recycling symbol on it your council may not want it, calling something just 'plastic' is worse than useless.

The bag was only about one third full. The bottom had 'rotted', i.e. spontaneously composted. It hadn't just fallen apart like wet paper would do. If I'd left it long enough to fill it, it would have been stinking. (I did see some brown paper bin liners the other day - I don't think I'll be buying any).

This one had rotted out in about a week.

I'm all in favour of using less, reusing, and recycling, but the plastics packaging industry and the recycling industry have to make it all very much simpler. There are too many types of plastic, many of them used in combination which makes recycling more difficult. And the symbols printed on the plastic containers that tell you what type of plastic it is, are often unreadable.

If the plastics packaging and the recycling industries can't manage to do that, for technical reasons, then the simplest solution is to incinerate it all, generate electricity and send the ash to landfill or use it as an aggregate in concrete or whatever. At least that way, some use is made of it all.

And of course I read that around 90% of all plastic waste in the seas is dumped into the Pacific from just five rivers. Just how much of that waste is waste exported from the UK is an unanswered question, but it does make me wonder just how much difference the UK's efforts will really make.

Their automated systems can't see black plastic. What they need to do is supplement the detection/vision systems with ones working on different frequencies and that can see black or manufacturers need to be banned from using black. Either way solves the problem.

SteveW

I think that's all part of the same issue Bill. Sorting the 'black plastic' they do want from the (chemically different) black plastic that they don't.

Cheers, T i m

'Here', there is a good chance it wouldn't be taken.

Cheers, T i m

That's the $100 question I understand John.

Isn't that a difficult statement to justify, long term (ITRW etc)?

I have asked but because I predict the answer wasn't supportive of their (limited) understanding / views, I never got a complete reply.

But it's not FoC is it, it's comes off our Council Tax (or should / is supposed to etc)?

Sure, but until we have a better / more centralised solution, what else is there?

But it's nothing to do with workers but part of being (in principal at least) being 'a good citizen'? In the same way some of us also take as few seconds to pick up street rubbish that may have blown near our house, even though 'The Council' might do it? (I also report faulty street lights or damaged street furniture / signs etc).

Well yes, but where is the fun in that! ;-)

Well, quite (rolls eyes). But it's not just a matter of sorting the wanted stuff is it, but not taking (in 'recycling') stuff they don't want and haven't asked for in the first place?

They have said it would be 'much better' if we all grew our own food, produced our own electricity and disposed of our own waste, but because that isn't always possible / practical, they / we try to do the next best thing. eg, 'some people' do grow some of their own veg and do compost their own garden waste and who therefore wouldn't be such a burden on society re the amount of (green) waste they produce (assuming the Council can't offset other costs with it) or create as much carbon by transporting a cucumber half way across the world.

I'm all for 'doing my bit', especially when it makes perfect / reasonable sense for me to do so.

A while back I was crushing ally cans and when I got 3 large bin bags full (I'd collected them in dustbins in the back garden), I ran them into the local scrap yard (when passing etc). I think I only got a couple of quid for them and so we decided that it wasn't worth it *for us* to continue to do so, so still crush them (by foot) but give them to the Council to sell via the recycling system.

Cheers, T i m

As do (did) ours but I wasn't sure of their composition.

Ours (translucent green) could be the same then?

When the Mrs asked for more food waste / caddy liners cast the local One_Stop_Shop they said they no longer supplied them and to use things like sliced bread wrappers (so the collectors could still see they only contained food waste)?

To the naked eye presumably?

Whilst the largest, not the only though. ;-(

Smaller than might end up back in your fish supper?

Cheers, T i m

They are two differnt types of bag, compostable and 'bio degradable' are NOT the same.

Not when done correctly, but we don;t always know what our councils or those they employ might do.

Yes it was watchdog, and did yuo know what that green dot actually meant, and now you do know, how has that affected your life ?

How do you know when something is recyclable is the question, most would think that if you put a recycle symbol on the packaging indicating re-cycle then that means it's recyclable. But is that the case.

But it's not always clear just how recyclable an object is.

Is a pizza box recyclable ? The sot you get from dominaos , pizza hut etc ?

Which bin we have 3, compostable, recycling and non-recycling.

I have two old LCD clocks and other electrical products, transformer PSU's so which bin should they go in ?.

Well that's what they tell you. Years ago the college told use to recycle all the old paper printouts for recyccling. Then someone followed the recycle lorry and found them tipping the paper into the same large binm as the general rubbish the explanation was that there was more paper collected than was recyclable.

Why not add some radiaactivity while you're at it ;-)

But seriously if you had a serious medical condition and need to take pills that came in non recyclable containers who's fault is it ?